To Farms or Cities: An Historical Tension Between Canada and Its Immigrants

Date Presented:

May 10, 2001

Abstract:

For much of Canadian history, particularly during the critical era of mass migration that straddled the decades of the turn of the century, the government may have welcomed immigrants with an open hand, but that same hand was also forcefully pressing immigrants into a narrowly–defined geographic and economic corner. Indeed, what distinguishes Canadian immigration history during the first half of this century, and makes it so different from that of the United States, is the degree to which Canadian immigration policy and practice was predicated on the notion that the place for non–English speaking immigrants, foreigners as they were commonly called, and for their Canadian–born children and children's children through the generations was in the Canadian hinterland, engaged in farming and extractive labor.

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